The present invention relates to a firefighting apparatus, such as a fire truck, a trailer or other vehicles, and more particularly to a firefighting apparatus with an aerial ladder and at least one of a rung alignment status indicator and a load status indicator.
There are a variety of fire trucks and rescue vehicles that include aerial ladders to assist in the fighting of fires. These aerial ladders usually are mounted on a frame or chassis of a fire truck. The ladder can be raised from a generally horizontal position to an angled position so that the ladder extends updwardly from the frame. The ladder can be extended and retracted to achieve varying heights for rescue operations and/or for the application of firefighting fluids.
Generally, aerial ladder trucks are used to fight fires from elevated positions or to rescue victims trapped in burning buildings. Many times, an aerial ladder truck is dispatched to an emergency location such as the location of a traffic accident, a boating accident, a plane accident, a man-made or natural disaster and/or a terrorist attack, where the aerial ladder is to be used to rescue one or more individuals, or to provide elevated application of firefighting fluids.
Use of the aerial ladder can ladder be complex and dangerous in many ways. For example, where sections of an aerial ladder are partially extended, the rungs of one ladder section can be misaligned with the rungs of another ladder section. In turn, a user of the ladder will have a decreased foot hold on the outermost section's rungs. In some cases, the user may not even be able to attain a foothold on a rung, in which case the user can lose their footing and possibly fall. Some manufacturers have attempted to address this by placing sensors on the ladder rungs. The sensors can send signals to a control box of the aerial ladder. The control box can light a small bulb on the control box when the sensors sense the rungs are misaligned. In such a case, a user standing immediately adjacent the control box, operating the aerial ladder, becomes aware of the misalignment and unsafe condition. Another user on or entering the aerial ladder, however, usually is completely unaware of the rung misalignment and the lit bulb because they are out of view of the same. In this case, the user entering the aerial ladder might not use extra care or refrain from entering the ladder, which could result in injury if the user cannot attain a safe footing on the misaligned ladder rungs.
As another example of the danger in operating aerial ladders, in some cases, the load on the ladder sections is significant (due to the weight of users and/or equipment high up the ladder). This can create a moment sufficient to overturn the fire truck. Some manufacturers have attempted to address this by placing load sensors on the aerial ladder to identify unsafe loading. The sensors can send signals to a control box of the aerial ladder. The control box can light a small bulb on the control box when the sensors sense an unsafe loading condition. In such a case, a user standing immediately adjacent the control box, operating the aerial ladder, becomes aware of the unsafe loading condition. Another user on or entering the aerial ladder, however, usually is completely unaware of the loading condition and the lit bulb because they are out of view of the same. In this case, the user on the aerial ladder might continue up the ladder to make the loading conditions even more unsafe. Further, when an emergency location is noisy, the user adjacent the control box may not be able to warn the user on the ladder of the unsafe condition. This can lead to toppling of the fire truck in some extreme load situations.
Thus, while aerial ladder trucks are currently available and helpful in a variety of situations, there remains room for improvement in their function, safe operation and safe utilization.